Species turnover rates on islands: dependence on census interval

Measurements of species turnover in island bird communities demonstrate two trends with increasing census interval t: (i) Apparent turnover rates T decrease greatly with t, and (ii) the coefficient of variation of T decreases asymptotically to a constant value. These effects are predicted by a statistical model whose parameters are the immigration and extinction probabilities of each species. Available bird censuses at intervals of decades underestimate turnover rates by about an order of magnitude.